Tuesday, October 30, 2018

The Beginning and the End

It was a nice beginning and a beautiful ending. The sad part was what happened in between. Or to put it another way, nothing happened in between.

My wife and I were inside our car which was parked near the stream where the Cream-bellied Fruit dove had been lately. We were also waiting for our friend, Peter, and his guests from Shanghai. By the road we saw our first bird..the Grey Wagtail.


It wasn't long when it was joined, or shall I say, bullied by a Blue Rock Thrush! 


We thought that such unexpected sighting would augur well for the rest of our birding day. It didn't. It wasn't long when our friends arrived. So we staked out the area by the brook and waited for the hoped-for lifer. Nada. Even the Philippine Bulbuls and Philippine Fairy Bluebirds decided to stay at places beyond our photographic distance.

And that continued for the whole morning. We would hear the bird calls. And that was about it. Heard only. The usual mixed flock were surprisingly missing.

After lunch, we all agreed to call it a day. Peter and company said they would go ahead since Cynthia and I would be doing some car washing before heading home. After that we drove slowly still hoping that we would encounter some birds. Then we saw Peter's car parked by the Sidlakan area. We parked behind it and looked for them. We saw Peter shooting at something. "Flaming Sunbirds" he informed us. That was the beautiful ending to an otherwise heart-breaking briding sortie.

Male 
female


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